This page has been validated.
102
I could not help applauding myself on the dexterity with which I had accomplished this latter adventure, as well as on the general success of my expedition to Suffolk, on which I had been absent from London exactly nine weeks. And when it is considered that I was then but just turned of seventeen years old, the reader must allow that I displayed a genius and abilities which, had they been devoted to more honourable purposes, would have done me no small credit. But I am now writing my "Confessions," and shall therefore not attempt to palliate my faults at the expense of my veracity.
